Getting victims to go to the police: Jarvis DeBerry

Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said Thursday that the two men suspected of killing a 55-year-old grandmother in West Carrollton Monday night were suspected of repeated attacks on the woman's 15-year-old grandson. However, police couldn't arrest the two men for attacking the teenager, the chief said, because he wouldn't cooperate with them.

Michael DeMocker / The Times-PicayuneRoanl Serpas takes the oath of office from Mayor Mitch Landrieu during the swearing-in of the new police chief at Gallier Hall May 11.

According to Serpas, who met with The Times-Picayune Thursday morning, Eula Mae Butler Ivey had pleaded with her grandson to work with the police so that the men who had shot him could be arrested and prosecuted.

But to no avail. Ivey was standing outside a house in the 8900 block of Birch Street when a white sedan approached. Bullets fired from that car hit Ivey. She fell down in the driveway and died. Her grandson -- whom she'd been urging to take sensible steps to protect himself -- was inside the house, police say. He still got hit in the leg with a bullet and was treated at the LSU Trauma Center. Police say 25-year-old Ryan Carroll and 20-year-old Carey Jones killed Ivey. The two brothers turned themselves in Tuesday.

Shortly before he arrived for a visit at the newspaper, the new police chief gave an interview to 106.7 FM. During that broadcast he said he wanted New Orleanians to think of the police as something other than an occupying force. Is that how Ivey's grandson viewed the police -- as occupiers who meant him no good? According to Serpas, the teenager had been riddled with bullets on one occasion and shot again this month, which is why his grandmother was begging him to cooperate with authorities. Does the teenager's refusal to cooperate with police after repeated attacks illustrate fear of the Police Department or, at minimum, the fear of being seen working with the Police Department?

While he made it clear during his newspaper visit that he was not apologizing for the department's well-publicized criminal behavior, Serpas said he believes that the teenager would have been impossible to persuade if Mother Teresa herself was in a police uniform offering him her help. To hear the chief tell it, the teenager wanted to handle it in a way deemed acceptable in the streets, leaving us to infer that his refusal to address it the legal way resulted in the death of his grandmother.

That assumes, of course, that the police would have been able to find and arrest Carroll and Jones as soon as the teenager began cooperating with authorities. It also assumes that the suspects would have stayed locked up until trial, that the trial would have led to a conviction and that nobody else acting on the suspects' behalf would have attacked the teenager or his family. Responding to a crime with vigilantism perpetuates our murder problem. That's clear. But we need to be honest with ourselves and admit that there's never a guarantee that working with authorities will make everything better.

We must do everything we can to persuade, cajole, encourage and beg victims and witnesses of crime to cooperate, but given the long-standing dysfunction in our criminal justice system, we can't guarantee them justice. That being said, it's easy to understand the frustration the chief expressed Thursday. It seems to be a good example of how staying mum leads to murders. Ken Foster, who helped found "SilenceIsViolence" in 2007 said Thursday that it's not just the witnesses to crime who keep their mouths shut. We also have a "huge problem," he said, convincing the victims themselves to put their trust in the system.

"It doesn't get any of us anywhere when even the victims are afraid of testifying," he said. Many victims doubt that authorities are going to stand with them and keep them safe as a case proceeds through the courts, Foster said. He hopes that the department under Serpas will do a better job letting crime victims know what resources are available to them than it has before.

Baty Ladis, a co-founder of the organization, said in an e-mail: "I never like to see undue pressure placed on an individual who has the misfortune of possessing intimate knowledge of violent acts. The call has to be to the community as a whole, to speak out against a culture of violent intimidation."